Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

Although receiving recruiting-related messages from employers and communicating with employees at potential employers were the social media activities that yielded the greatest increase in job offer rates for members of the Class of 2016, they are little used avenues of connecting with employers, according to results of NACE’s Class of 2016 Student Survey.

Survey participants from the Class of 2016 who received recruiting-related messages from employers reported a bump in their job offer rate of 13 percent over their classmates who did not. Still, just one-quarter of students used this activity. (See Figure 1.)

Likewise, the job offer rate for students who communicated with current employees at potential employers was 9 percent higher than for their classmates who did not. Just 30 percent of students reported participating in this activity.

Interestingly, while receiving messages from employers had a positive effect, initiating contact with employers had no impact whatsoever. In addition, more passive applications of social media use—such as using hashtags to research employers or posting a resume—yielded no material benefit to job-search success.

NACE’s Class of 2016 Student Survey was conducted February 16 – April 30, 2016; more than 23,000 students across all degree and year levels at colleges and universities nationwide took part, including 5,600 graduating seniors. The focus of the Class of 2016 Student Survey report is the 5,600 bachelor’s degree students who indicated that they would be graduating—or already had graduated—during the 2015-16 academic school year (July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2016), and were thus members of the Class of 2016. The Class of 2016 Student Survey was sponsored by Enterprise.

Survey participants can access a full copy of the report through MyNACE. Highlights from the Class of 2016 Student Survey are available at www.naceweb.org/surveys/student.aspx.